


five years later, and yet you are still a fool

by JenelleLucia



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Post Time Skip, hgjdf kisses before war? i think so, pre - release, so this is kind of a sequel to my first oneshot?? thank you guys so much for reading it!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-20 14:09:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19378288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenelleLucia/pseuds/JenelleLucia
Summary: ;;; alternatively, ingrid and sylvain return to garreg mach monastery, where they sit among the rubble of the place they remembered having tea five years ago. // sylvain / ingrid, post time skip.





	five years later, and yet you are still a fool

**Author's Note:**

> HI WOW, so this time it's all me, haha -- i have a couple ideas of what i want to be able to do with sylvain / ingrid, i just figured they'd be super soft this time around. but thank you so much for commenting/reading/giving kudos to my last sylvain/ingrid !!! i can't wait to write more for them (maybe even a proper multichap fic ;3) but please look forward to it !!

Ingrid remembers that five years ago, the gardens of Garreg Mach Monastery was a beautiful place. 

If she thinks about it -- closes her eyes and really thinks about it -- she remembers the way the hedges and topiaries were so strategically placed and cut around the gardens. She sees the bushes and bushes of flowers that complimented each hedge, remembering so clearly what each bush had and every bloom after that. The archway that had brought her here was cracked and broken, pieces of it laying about on the ground. She remembers the flowers there, and the vines that curled around it laid amongst the destroyed archway, now resembling anything but. 

Sylvain whistling from behind her catches her attention, and she jumps and whirls around almost immediately, clutching at her chest before sighing and then looking over at the ruins of what used to have been five years ago. Five years ago, there was a garden, and they sat there in that garden talking about life and sharing memories and letting the conversation topics flow and ebb and so on and so forth. Five years ago was when Ingrid really,  _really_ looked at Sylvain and the thought crosses her mind. She smiles, turning away from him as she gazes at the ruins in silence. 

"You know, Dim -- _His Highness_ ," he breaks the silence by correcting himself. That's right, Dimitri was the king now, no longer a friend but surely one at the same time, his presence much colder and much...lonelier, than they would have thought for it to have been before. Ingrid and Sylvain shake away the thought; Dimitri is the same around them, or he tries to be, but the war has become worse than what it was and he fights with no remorse. He fights against Empress Edelgard now, and Lord Claude, and they stand there in silence, amongst the ruins of what had been five years ago and what had become of it now. 

(What...what had changed? Sylvain and Ingrid stop to wonder about that since the war had began, but they remember that they don't have the time to think about it.) 

"... _His Highness_ will be looking for us," he finally says, and that makes Ingrid turn to him once more. That's right; they'd taken over the monastery, possibly for the day, for night; there's no telling when Empress Edelgard or Lord Claude will be back to try and take it from them. Ingrid nods, arms crossed and she takes in the damage from behind her. 

The ornate tables are gone, now; bushes and hedges are burnt and damaged and cut and unrecognizable, just like this place, and it's dark and gloomy and war - torn. Her gaze lands everywhere and anywhere until it finally lands on 

( _Ah._ ) 

For what five years has done to the both of them, Sylvain's grown. Sylvain's grown, and he looks tired and war - worn and she thinks that if there were any other places that he deserved to be, for sure it wouldn't be here. For all of Faerghus' short springs and what seemed to be their endless winters, Sylvain might have done well up there rather than here. She knows he would argue otherwise; _the battlefield_ , he says, _is no place for a pretty lady as you_ , and when she would stutter and argue back he would laugh and hold his hands up in surrender with a large grin on his face. 

She studies his face, though; yes, Sylvain is tired and war - worn, but what hasn't changed in the five years that had passed were his unruly hair and his neverchanging boyish smile, which he sends her way as he makes his way over to her and makes her heart race. In the five years that was something that she was finally able to admit to him, and to herself, but war is what cuts the bliss short. 

"What do you think changed in those last five years...?" Ingrid finally speaks up, which makes Sylvain’s boyish smile disappear and his lips purse into a thin line. “Why...Why did things turn out the way they did…?” 

He meets her halfway, his gaze not on her but on the ruins of the garden in front of them. 

“...I don’t know,” Sylvain finally responds, and her gaze goes from him to the ruins of the gardens before them. She doesn’t look at him; she expected that response from him, and she doesn’t blame him either. She’s not entirely sure if she wants to know, but she’s sure that eventually she has to -- they _both_ have to, for that matter. The moment she looks up the boyish smile returns to his face, and she can’t help but smile, too. “But what I do know is that we’ll get through this together.” 

“With Felix and His Highness,” Ingrid adds. She hopes that much is true. 

They stand there for moments longer in silence, the ruins of the garden finally becoming clear to them, and they look at each other. The boyish grin appears and Ingrid’s heart can’t help but skip a beat, and she looks down once more. It makes him smile, though, in the way that she gets flustered still; they’ve gone through five years together, even longer than that as just friends and he figures that she would have been used to this by now but he guesses otherwise.

“Hey, Ing,” he’s the one who breaks the silence once more; that gets her to look up at him. “Remember when we came here for the first time?” 

“How can I forget?” she asks with a slight smile on her face. “I had to get you away from the girls from the Black Eagles house, and you got me tea and cake as an apology.” 

“Well, yeah! Not to mention that you were staring at me a good half the time, and I think you looked like you were about to pop a vein the minute I asked you --” 

“ -- What color the blue lion was,” Ingrid remembers that all too well, and she remembers that oh, so fondly and with a smile on her face. Sylvain thinks it suits her. “And I was not staring at you the whole time.” 

“Yes you were.”  

“I was not!” 

Sylvain chuckles, then from a distance hearing Dimitri calling out to regroup. He supposes that Ingrid’s heard as well, and he scratches the back of his neck. “His Highness calls.” 

“He does,” Ingrid agrees, and just before they leave it’s almost so natural for him to lean down and kiss her, no reservations attached. It’s brief, though, but Sylvain was always one to make it last a while; he quite liked it that way, and Ingrid supposed that she learned to love it, just as she learned to love him. “You’re still such a fool, Sylvain.” 

He grins, pushing back a piece of her hair from her face as they walk out of the gardens to meet Dimitri together. “And so are you.”


End file.
